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Worried Mom

I’m a worried Mom. She is at the vet right now. I took her in because she sounded like she had a hairball caught in her throat that she couldn’t get up and she has been weazing and coughing. Not to mention she had a 10 minute straight reverse sneezing episode about 5 days ago at 5:30a.m. They wanted to keep her because they suspected that it could be kennel cough.

She’s up to date with all of her vaccinations and has only been in contact with two dogs in the last few weeks. One is my Dad’s dog who is 14 years old when we went on vacation and the other is a friend’s dog who is also very well cared for and up to date with every possible shot, but because my friend’s dog goes to Doggy Day Care occasionally, the vet suspects that because kennel cough is so highly contagious, he could have been carrying the virus and passed it along to Lucy during the measly 3 minute interaction that they had a few days ago. He said that sometimes the dog can be asymptomatic.

I’m not exactly buying it and I think/hope it’s a hairball, but they have kept her and wanted to put her in isolation for observation. They said that they can’t “test” her to see if that’s what it is nor can they treat her because it’s like the flu. He also said that even though she’s been vaccinated, she could still catch it because like the flu, it can be many different strains.

I was a mess leaving her at the vet. The ONE day I don’t wear waterproof mascara! I felt so silly, but the thought of her being there and being sick and just as bad, leaving her with people she doesn’t know (she’s finicky about strangers), broke my heart in a million pieces.

Just what am I going to do if I ever become a real mother!

Update: Lucy is home now, although the vet is 99% certain that it is kennel cough and needs to stay away from any other dogs for 2 weeks. (They even made me pick her up around the back entrance.) He now says that it likely wasn’t my friend’s dog who she saw really briefly a few days ago (which seemed to be the clincher when I first mentioned it making him pretty sure it was kennel cough) and that it likely happened while she was at my Dad’s while we were on vacation (due to time lines and incubation periods etc). We can’t pin point when it happened. My Dad’s dog is not sick or showing signs of it, but the vet thinks that she likely must have picked it up along the walking trails during their walks because he said that it’s “aerosol” and highly contagious. Also she would have been more stressed out being away from home and therefore more susceptible.

But it seems to me that it’s kind of a coincidence that this happened in the same time as getting her vaccinations?! We had her vaccines updated 3 days before we took her down to my Dad’s to watch her while we went away and there’s no sign of any sick dogs. Don’t dogs sometimes “react” to vaccinations?? Aren’t they actually giving a little bit of the virus TO you when you receive one? Anyway, enough of my neurotic worrisome ways, she is home and has antibiotics to take for the next week to prevent any infections from taking place as a result of the cough.